Falling
by Boston Manor
Summary: FINA One-shot. Please R&R! My first fan-fic!


**FALLING**

**This is my first effort, so please be gentle!**

**Disclaimer: I do not, of course, own any of ACD's characters**

Falling, falling …….

So it was true, then – that one's life flashes before the eyes in the moments before death.

How had it come to this? It was clear, was it not, that his steps had set upon the path leading to this moment some forty years earlier. He had not considered himself the romantic type, and yet her eyes captivated him. Her graceful movements. And, of course, the painting hanging on the wall. He had immediately recognised it as a Vernet, and upon more intimate enquiry had discovered that the object of his love was related to that French dynasty.

He had been amazed that she had not seen it to be the thing of value that he did – merely "a beautiful thing" to be admired for its own quality. That would have to change when they were married. He could not understand such sentimentality – he, a scientist, an enquirer, a great in his generation. Had they not feted him when he had published his paper on the Binomial theorem at 21 years of age? Had that not led to his appointment as Chair of Mathematics at Southampton University? Had he not achieved so much more than his station master brother?

Falling.

And it had been from there, on a rare excursion into Sussex, that he had met her. His dear, wonderful Alice. Surely this was to be his life partner – well, not partner of course, in the sense of any equality, but certainly a welcome companion. For all his formidable intellect, the loneliness often seemed as a cage from which he wished nothing more than to escape.

His world had fallen apart that night. He had been ill with a fever for some days and was freshly out of bed and on his feet. She had not visited him, but he could – perhaps – forgive her for that. Until he arrived at the house, and saw the Squire's son kissing her goodbye on the doorstep.

He realised that it was from that point that their fates were sealed, and with them, his own. Over a period of some ten years he had followed her fortunes, as she had been married and in due course given birth to two boys by that cursed Squire – by now the father had died and his love was the Squire's wife. How much greater she could have been!

Falling.

Perhaps it had all got too much. The events of that fateful night, he had blotted from his memory so successfully. Until now. How he had gone to the door – had it been drink, or pure rage? Probably the latter. Yes, he remembered now. One of his schemes to supplement his paltry University income had been terminated by some unusually insightful detective work by the local constabulary. He had set up a business next to the Police Station from where he had undertaken to make enquiries of the criminal underclasses in the hope of returning stolen property. That he enjoyed a high success rate was no doubt due to the relationship he had with those criminals, with the stolen materials actually being hidden in the warehouse to the rear of the shop. His charge of ten guineas to investigate and return the stolen goods had given him more income than he would have expected otherwise – enough to allow him to woo Alice, and for her to notice him.

He wanted her back. He had endured enough torments over the intervening years, of which reading of the birth of the boys in the paper had been one of the lowest points in his life. But one which hardened him. He would have her, and if he could not have her, then no-one would. He had burst in that night as the door was opened, and before a minute had passed the husband and wife lay dead, clinging to each other as the deadly blows rained down.

Falling.

It was the only time in his life that he had killed. He did not enjoy it, but it was after all no more than a business transaction. From that point on he had made sure that although he was in complete control, his hand was never on the murder weapon, or his signature on the blackmail note, or his hand inside the glove that broke into the vault. It was unnecessary for him to sully himself with such base matters as long as there were others willing – at a price – to do the work on his behalf. And there were enough of those.

The boys of course had been packed off to boarding school and then progressed their studies in their own ways. He would have liked to have had a role in their upbringing but it was not to be. It was 'not socially acceptable'. In any event, as it turned out, it would have been too much of a challenge, and they would have got in the way. Who knows, they might have wrested his leadership away from him. They turned out poorly. The older was a corpulent, lethargic fellow, rarely seen outside of his close world of Whitehall. The other – well that was the ultimate irony, wasn't it? The exact opposite of the man he would have moulded him into.

And now, it drew to a close. He was to be killed by the son of his unrequited love.

Here at the Reichenbach Falls.


End file.
